“I don’t care what you wish,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Just tell me what’s going on. Where did I come from? Why am I here? And how—how could I not be real?” I whirled and faced a watercolor of a horse, wrapping my arms around my waist. I immediately wondered if that action had been programmed, too.
“You are real,” Mom said in her soothing calm-down-and-listen-to-me voice. I bet she didn’t know that, right now, it had the opposite effect. It made me want to jump up and down, scream bloody murder, and shake that poise right out of her. “That’s why I stole you from the military labs. I worked with you every day, Mila. Actually, I’m the bioengineer who helped create you. I know that you aren’t just a weapon . . . you’re too human for that. So yes, I stole you—to keep you safe. You deserved more than what the army had to offer.”
Stolen. I was stolen goods.
Mom’s hand smoothed my hair aside before gently stroking the nape of my neck. Everything inside me wanted to believe her, to know that she really did love me, that I really was part human. She’d always been there for me, when I was little, when Dad died . . .
. . . except—none of that was real. But how was that possible? I could see the memories etched in my head, so perfectly clear, playing out behind my eyes like detailed videos.
Like videos.
The pressure of her fingers on my neck went from comforting to oppressive in an instant. I jerked away and whirled to face her. “How did you do it? All those memories I have?”
Mom—no, Nicole—sighed, her shaking fingers reaching up to remove her glasses so she could rub the bridge of her nose. “I programmed them. The reason some of them feel especially real is because I created them using a virtual reality program, which allowed me to actually insert you into the memory.”
Programmed. My entire past, everything I’d understood to be true about my life, my family, what had formed me as a person. Stripped away with one simple word. Programmed.
“And the fire?” I whispered. “What kind of a person makes that up? And wait—is your name even Nicole?”
“Yes, it’s Nicole, but Laurent, not Daily.” Mom—Nicole—sighed and rubbed her head. “I was just trying to buy us time, to figure out a way to tell you! My first priority was to keep us safe. The only way I could make sure to protect you was to make you think you were a real girl. There’s no doubt in my head that the government is searching for us, with every resource they have at their disposal. Why do you think I chose Clearwater? I disabled your tracking device, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find us.”
And it was just going from bad to worse. Tracking device, like I was some kind of runaway dog. Except—at least dogs were truly alive. Whereas I was some kind of monster. Part living cells, mostly hardware.
All freak.
She made another move to touch me, but I batted her hand away. “Don’t! I don’t even understand how . . . how can any of this be true? Manufactured emotions?” A tight ache squeezed my throat—programmed? Real? How could I possibly know?—and I lowered my voice to a whisper. “If I’m not human, why does this hurt so much?”
“It’s a little like phantom limb syndrome . . . only for emotions. You might not have the same parts as a regular human, but you can still sense the feeling in those parts when you’re in an emotional state—pressure, warmth, chill, visceral, all of it. Phantom sensations, if you will, copied from the feelings of a teenage human girl. Via an elaborate neuromatrix, we prewired your brain to believe you were formed just like a human body, so it would accept all those sensations as real.”
Prewired. Neuromatrix. It was too much.
“And what about Dad’s shirt?” I sneered, using air quotes around the word “Dad.” “Was that just to buy us time, too? And that stupid necklace?”
Before she could grasp my intentions, I’d lunged forward, grabbed the emerald around her neck, and yanked. The fragile chain snapped, and when it did, I chucked the entire thing across the room.
“Mila!” she gasped before scrambling after it.
I raced down the hall, rushing into my room and locking the door behind me, desperate to escape before I burst into tears.
I threw myself facedown on my bed as the first sob hit, felt the warm tears pool under my cheeks. Tears I wasn’t even sure were real. Were they made up of some weird solution, prompted by “appropriate” environmental stimuli? Was I really sad, or was a computer program telling me to feel sad?
One minute I was a normal girl, the next . . . a monster.
That thought urged me to my feet and over to the oval-shaped mirror topping my white dresser. Frankenstein did not stare back at me. Just my own face. Were my eyes a slightly-too-improbable shade of leaf green? I reached up to slide my fingers through my hair. And my hair—how did it grow? Or didn’t it? Those memories of haircuts I had . . . they must all be fake. Not Mom—Nicole, I corrected once again. But even knowing what I did, calling her by name just didn’t feel right.
Next I touched the wetness on my cheeks. The liquid felt like real tears, but then, how did I even know what real tears felt like? How could I believe anything ever again, when everything I knew about myself was completely false?
Even my face, my familiar heart-shaped face with the extra-wide lower lip and the tiniest smattering of freckles fanning out from my nose. Not real. Not real.
Not. Real.
Before I knew it, my fist flew forward, my urge to destroy that phony reflection eclipsing everything else. Glass shattered and a jagged avalanche spilled across the dresser like a cascade of lies. Glittering lies, strewn in front of me as a reminder of everything I’d lost. Of everything I’d never had.
Once the rush of emotion faded, I surveyed the damage. Stupid. Not only had I made a huge mess, but the act hadn’t done anything but reinforce my otherness. No blood seeping through cuts in my knuckles, and only the faintest of pink scratches. Worst of all—no pain in my hand to speak of.
No, the only pain I was allowed was choking the nonexistent life from my fake heart.
Sweeping the shards onto the floor, I stormed over to the bed and slid between the sheets. Threw the pillow over my head in an effort to block out the world.
But I couldn’t block out the memories, false or not. Couldn’t block out the internal pain I shouldn’t even be able to feel.
Couldn’t keep those annoying phony tears that felt so, so real from flowing.
The familiar, musky scent of horse engulfed me, along with the slightly sweet smell of hay. It was quiet inside, except for the occasional snort or shuffling of hooves.
Quiet, but not safe.
Less than twenty-four hours before, this barn had been my refuge. A place where I could come to recover from Dad’s death in peace, under the nonjudgmental eyes of the horses. In my grief-stricken state, I’d never once believed that something worse could happen.
I’d never once imagined that discovering Dad hadn’t really died would haunt me in ways that his death never could.
Nowhere felt safe anymore.
“Why couldn’t I be a horse?” I asked, the sound of my voice making Bliss swing her massive head toward me, her huge oval nostrils snuffling at my hair. That simple gesture made my throat